[b]Walid Ra\'ad:[/b] Can you please identify yourself?

[b]Souheil Bachar:[/b] My name is Souheil Bachar. I am from the village of Houla in South Lebanon. I am 42 years old.

[b]Souheil Bachar:[/b] Can you identify yourself as well?

[b]Walid Ra\'ad:[/b] My name is Walid Ra\'ad. I am a media artist and teacher. I also work with The Atlas Group, a foundation established in 1976 to research the contemporary history of Lebanon.

[b]Walid Ra\'ad:[/b] Can you tell us about how you came in contact with us, The Alas Group, and about the tapes you have produced?

[b]Souheil Bachar:[/b] I saw your presentation of The Atlas Group Archive in September 1999 at the Ayloul Festival in Beirut. I was very intrigued by your foundation\'s mission and by the documents in your archive. I approached you after the presentation and we agreed to meet and talk. After a series of meetings between us two years ago, your foundation proposed to assist me in the production of videotapes about my experiences as a hostage. In the past two years, I have produced 53 short videotapes.

[b]Walid Ra\'ad:[/b] But you don\'t make public all 53 videotapes?

[b]Souheil Bachar:[/b] I have screened publicly all 53 videotapes but only in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Palestine and Morocco. Of the 53 videotapes, I allow only 2 tapes, Tapes #17 and #31 to be screened in North America and Western Europe.

[b]Walid Ra\'ad:[/b] Why?

[b]Souheil Bachar:[/b] I should mention that during my ten-year detention from 1983 to 1993, I was held for three months with 5 American men: Terry Anderson, Benjamin Weir, Thomas Sutherland, Martin Jenco and David Jacobsen. My detention with these men coincided with the »Arms for Hostages« negotiations unfolding in the mid-1980\'s between, among others, the US, Israel and Iran. In fact, my detention with the Americans came to an end on the day that the American Benjamin Weir was released, on September 14 1985, as a result of the first arms shipment by the US via Israel to Iran.

I should also state that after their release, many of the Western men who were held hostage in Lebanon in the 1980\'s have written and published books about their experiences in captivity. In fact, all five American men who were detained with me in 1985 have written books that were published in the US.

In tapes #17 and #31, I wanted to focus specifically on this aspect of my captivity, on my detention with the Americans along with my post-detention study of the writing of the story of captivity.

As to why I do not release the other tapes in North America and Western Europe, I am not interested in commenting on this matter. Furthermore, I would appreciate it if your questions in this interview deal strictly with what I examine and propose in Tapes #17 and #31.

[b]Walid Ra\'ad:[/b] Ok. In tape #17, you state that the tape should be dubbed with a female-voice over in the language of the host country where the tapes are screened. I have seen the tape screened in Germany, France and Italy but the female voice-over is always in English. Why?

[b]Souheil Bachar:[/b] No money was found for the dubbing into German, French and Italian. As a consequence, I made exceptions until funds are available.

[b]Walid Ra\'ad:[/b] I also noted that the English voice-over is not an accurate translation of what you say in Arabic. At times, the voice-over says the exact opposite of what you are saying in Arabic and at other times, it says something not related at all to what you are saying in Arabic. Do you translate the text yourself? And if so, why the difference between what you say in Arabic and the non-Arabic voice-over?

[b]Souheil Bachar:[/b] Yes, I do my own translations.

I have nothing to say about the second part of your question.

[b]Walid Ra\'ad:[/b] OK, then, let me then continue with a general question about the political scandal that is most closely associated in the US with the captivity of the Americans in Lebanon in the 1980\'s, the Iran-Contra affair. What is your understanding of the affair?

[b]Souheil Bachar:[/b] It is clear to me that no event framed more publicly the abduction of westerners in Lebanon than the American scandal widely known as the Iran-Contra affair. I suppose that in the United States, the mention of Iran-Contra conjures up for most people images of Oliver North.

Iran-Contra involved two distinct Reagan Administration policies. The first policy concerned the trading of US arms to Iran for, among other things, the release of US and other western hostages held in Lebanon by Iran\'s proxy militias in Beirut. The sales did in fact lead to the release of American hostages Benjamin Weir in 1985 and Martin Jenco and David Jacobsen in 1986. It is important to note that this initiative contradicted the publicly stated US policy »never to negotiate with states that sponsor terrorism;« Iran had been officially designated a sponsor of terrorism in January 1984.

The second policy involved the support of Contra military and paramilitary activities in Nicaragua between 1984 and 1986. The legality of this policy was also challenged in Congress and the press particularly in relation to the provisions of the First and Second Boland Amendments of 1982 and 1984.

What was taking place was that the US was overcharging the Iranians to the tune of 600% for the sales, and diverting the profits to support the Contras in Nicaragua. When this diversion scheme was revealed, it triggered a series of official investigations, 5 of them in fact between 1986 and 1993, beginning with US Attorney General Meese\'s Preliminary Inquiry into The Sale of Arms to Iran and concluding with Independent Councel Lawrence Walsh\'s report in 1993.

My reading of the investigations demonstrated to me that their investigative scope was limited to particular areas and as such failed to address a number of central questions about the development and implementation of US foreign policy. I am convinced that a bringing together of the facts was far from the sole or even the primary motive of these investigations. The investigations were politicized and partial, and they produced contested narratives that displaced interest away from the historical and policy dimensions of the affair and onto a concentrated celebration of the good health of the American political system. As such, the investigations failed to shed light on how a disastrous US policy in the region had contributed to the abduction of western men in Lebanon.

[b]Walid Ra\'ad:[/b] I get the sense from one segment in your tape, the one where you discuss how each American hostage begins his story by talking about the weather, that you are making a point about how the Americans were de-politicizing their abduction in their books, that they were treating their kidnappings in personal rather than political terms. Is this right?

[b]Souheil Bachar:[/b] Yes, that\'s correct. It is important to remember that the representation of the experience of captivity is by no means foreign to American readers. In fact, captivity narratives are »the only literary-mythological form indigenous to N. America.« From Indian captivity narratives such as Mary Rowlandson\'s to autobiographical accounts of Vietnam captivity such as Gerald Coffee\'s, the stories of a horrific detention at the hands of some enemy have been written and published widely in the United States.

My hypothesis then is that the captivity of the Americans in Lebanon was always a story to be told, written, and filmed, and inevitably has been told, written, and filmed. Anderson, and Sutherland knew this when they discussed whether »we would each write a book, should we ever be released.« We should also keep in mind that seven books by ex-hostages have already been published in the United States where »Den of Lions,« »Taken on Trust,« and »An Evil Cradling« have, over the past few years, become the privileged representatives of this evolved genre of captivity memoirs. Although the books\' sales figures did not meet publishers\' expectations, they were far from disappointing, with orders of 170,000 copies for Anderson\'s book even before it hit American bookstores. In England, »Den of Lions,« »Some Other Rainbow, « »Taken on Trust,« and »An Evil Cradling« have all been listed on national bestseller lists, with Brian Keenan\'s account topping »The Sunday Times« of London\'s bestseller list for nine weeks in 1992.

The captivity memoirs we ended up with present and repeat more or less familiar stories. Here, I am referring, first to a general recognizable structure of what is called the »captivity narrative,« a structure that can be detected in the various accounts; and second, to the fact that Anderson, Weir, Jenco, Sutherland and Jacobsen, who have all written and published books about their experiences in Lebanon, also spent part of their time in captivity together, in the same room. In other words, part of the chronology of events for Anderson, Weir, Sutherland, Jenco and Jacobsen is more or less the same. The same is true of Brian Keenan and John McCarthy, who have both written and published their captivity memoirs and who spent most of their detention together. This proliferation of captivity accounts that detail the experiences of men who had spent most of their captivity in the same place, around the same time, and under very similar conditions is intriguing. Commenting on this matter, Keenan remarked that this multiplicity of books proves that »each man experienced his imprisonment in his own way.« This remark highlights a particularly familiar tendency in the captivity memoirs whereby the experience of captivity is represented primarily as a psychological and individual rather than a social or political phenomenon. This move away from the socio-political is effected at the beginning of each of the narratives. The formula is familiar with each book beginning with a man in a happy condition of innocence or complacence. By divine intervention, this happiness is disrupted; man is alienated from his happy state and plunged into a trial and ordeal in which his soul is in peril. The incident of captivity figures as a complete accident, a misfortune. In the books by the Americans, almost all begin similarly by describing the moment or day of abduction. Jacobsen, Weir, Ciccipio, Waite, and Anderson respectively begin their accounts with the following passages:

[i]May 28 1985 was a typical Beirut morning, swiftly brightening as the sun burned off the early morning mist.
The morning of May 8 1984, blended beauty with harshness. On that bright spring day in the Muslim section of the city, the sounds of birds coming from the untended garden plot next to our apartment building contrasted with the angry growl of distant explosions.
I don\'t think there was a happier man in the world than I was on the morning of September 12, 1986.
Beirut, 20 February 1987
When I awoke, it was dusk. For a moment I lay still slowly, reluctantly returning to the conscious world. It was unusually quiet. A gentle breeze stirred the faded hotel curtains, bringing with it a hint of sea.[/i]

On the one hand, the emphasis in these beginnings on detailing the meteorological conditions in the city or the psychological state of mind of the hostage-to-be comes at the expense of some clarification of the socio-political context of Lebanon. By bracketing the very day, the very moment of their abduction from the socio-political context, the incident of captivity figures here too as an accident. The presence of westerners in Beirut during the mid-1980\'s is assumed to have no unusual significance, and Beirut is presented as any other city in the world, except for the »angry growl of distant explosions.« On the other hand, this emphasis falls on particularly charged markers, morning and daylight, and as such prefigures the trajectory of descent into the dark underground of Beirut (literally a fall) characteristic of the description of captivity in all the Lebanon narratives. A crucial shift is effected as the abductions are described in these terms. The shift is from the social and political toward the personal and psychological aspects of detention.

[b]Walid Ra\'ad:[/b] The hostages never write of a political dimension to their abduction?

[b]Souheil Bachar:[/b] Of course they did, but let me explain something else first.

From the books and from my discussions with them in captivity, it is clear to me that the hostages were all to some extent aware that their abduction was a political rather than a criminal or personal matter. Most of them write in their books of four factors that they believed contributed to their detention: 1) The 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon; 2) The Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon along with Israel\'s detention of hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinian men and women in detention centers there; 3) The December 1983 bombings of US, French, and other Kuwaiti facilities in Kuwait by an Iranian allied group, and the subsequent arrest and imprisonment of some members of this group who became known as the Dawa Seventeen; and 4) The 1986 US bombing of Libya.

This political and historical dimension was also acknowledged by the families of the hostages who were dealing with the White House and the State Department during the detention of their loved ones. Carol Weir (Benjamin Weir\'s wife) has written about her meeting with then Secretary of State George Shultz. In the meeting, whose goal was to convince the Reagan administration to negotiate with the captors, Carol Weir had argued that »it should be recognized that they (the Shi\'a of Lebanon) had some legitimate grievances against the United States.« The grievances that Weir mentioned were primarily to »our [US] lack of concern for justice in the area.« She wrote of the oppressive US-supported Israeli aggressions in South Lebanon as emblematic of this injustice:

[i]Americans didn\'t seem to understand why there is so much rage against us in the countries of the Middle East ... The United States had supplied the Israelis with cluster bombs, vacuum bombs, and weapons of every kind. American bombs by air and American shells by sea were raining on the city of Beirut. The civilian population was on the verge of panic.[/i]

Unfortunately, Secretary of State Shultz was more intent on dismissing and discrediting the captors than on engaging in any kind of dialogue with them as was evident from his response to Carol Weir that »the Shiites ... are pagan and primitive people,« and that »such people were crazy, they heard voices from God, they were deranged. It was impossible to talk to them.« One understands better how such disturbingly racist proclamations could be stated in public by the US Secretary of State if one keeps in mind the fact that such declarations were consistent with many of the characterizations of the captors presented by the press and subsequently reaffirmed by the hostages. In other words, even as the hostages would present various political motives to explain their abductions, at the same time they drowned these political explanations in a barrage of terms that demonized and belittled the hostage takers and their motives. A discussion of this last point, of the hostages\' representations of their captors will have to wait for another time and please do not ask my of whether the captors, be they Hizballah or anyone else was »a mark of shame upon the Lebanese Shiite community they purported to represent.« On this matter, I proceed with the understanding that the captors and their actions were at times despised and at times held in high esteem for various reasons by Lebanese and westerners alike.

[b]Walid Ra\'ad:[/b] Can you tell us something about your insistence on having your voice dubbed by a female voice-over?

[b]Souheil Bachar:[/b] A unanimous conclusion drawn by the hostages about captivity is that the period of detention in Lebanon has radically altered their understanding of the world. They all seem to come out of their horrible ordeal with a new and gratifying way to relate to family, friends, State, and God. But the most significant and productive aspect of detention is that the westerners come out of it with a clearer and better sense of self. The matter of a female voice-over is for me central to the question of the particular kind of self that emerges from captivity.

A fascinating and revealing aspect of books written by the Americans is that of the literary contributions of the hostages\' girlfriends and wives. Anderson\'s, Sutherland\'s, and Weir\'s books, for example, include sections in which Madeleine Anderson, Jean Sutherland and Carol Weir contribute by relating »their« side of the story. In many reviews of the books in the US popular press, I was surprised that critics have characterized the contributions of the wives as »odd« and as »distracting.« The question I want to ask these critics is: From what does Madeleine\'s or Carol\'s account divert us to deserve this characterization as a »distraction«?

It is evident when reading the captivity memoirs that what was unfolding in Beirut was a series of events from which the wives were excluded. Beirut\'s cells, in other words, were spaces populated mainly by men, by Arab and western men. So, one can say that the wives\' contributions constitute a gendered distraction in that they impose onto an otherwise male narrative of captivity a woman\'s thoughts and perspective.

However, it is noteworthy that Madeleine\'s account was not the only one written by a woman close to Terry Anderson. Terry\'s sister, Peggy Say, had for years been vocal in the popular press about her brother\'s fate. Her book titled Forgotten, which detailed her efforts to secure through meetings with domestic and foreign governments and officials her brother\'s release, was published during her brother\'s absence in 1987. By 1993 when Terry Anderson\'s book was published, Peggy Say\'s book was out of print and she was out of sight.

What I want to argue is that while the captivity of westerners in Lebanon affected not only the hostages but also their families, friends, governments, and numerous others, it is intriguing that the story of captivity is distilled in the memoirs to being not that of the western men and their mothers, fathers, brothers, friends, or sisters, but particularly that of the hostages and their wives/girlfriends. The distillation of the narrative in its published form suggests that Madeleine and the wives/girlfriends\' contributions constitute not only gendered contributions but more.

While the published narratives posit the hostage\'s relations with his wife/girlfriend at the center of the story of captivity and post-captivity, the books begin by relating a very different pre-captivity rapport between the hostages and their partners at the time. For the majority of the western hostages, Lebanon was not only a place of intrigue and violence but also a place that offered them an alternative to a grueling life in the west. Many former hostages describe their lives in the west as unsatisfactory, professionally and personally. One hostage writes that his two marriages had failed because of his workaholism and that it was these difficulties that had driven him to Lebanon. He writes,

[i]I went through two difficult marriages, both to women I admire. I confess that my workaholism was the major reason for the difficulties. Now, in captivity, I was able to dwell on repairing the mistakes that had, in many ways, driven me to the Middle East.[/i]

David Jacobsen speaks of his »escape from the United States« as a consequence of the court proceedings that followed his break-up with his wife. He writes, »Following a bitter and emotionally upsetting divorce that left me with considerable anger against the family court system, I fled the United States ...« And for Brian Keenan, his choice to leave his country had to do with his desires to recharge himself with new ideas, thoughts, relationships, and feelings. He writes of his fears and anxieties about aging and of »never going anywhere.« It is subsequently made clear that Keenan\'s fears and anxieties are also and mainly about his inability to be like his colleagues and friends, to take up »the challenge that life presents, of love, domesticity, marriage.«

This theme of disrupted, strained and unrealized marriages as a motive behind the westerners\' desires to go to the Middle East sets up another crucial distinction between the west and the Middle East. In this distinction, the west stands as the locale of failed masculine relations to heterosexual domesticity, and Lebanon figures as the place that can and did rehabilitate the westerners so that they emerged from their captivity as the good husbands they ought to be.

The books also contain lengthy formulations by the hostages as to the sexuality of the captors, and about the various relations amongst the western men and between the western men and their Lebanese captors. These interactions are sexualized along the divide of power that separates the guards from the hostages. Some writers have already suggested that the drama of western women\'s captivity tends to revolve around their sexual assault. I wan to suggest that of western men\'s revolves around containing the threat of sexual desire for men, for Arab and western men. The threat of this desire for Arab men, emerges in the Lebanon captivity memoirs through the imagined scenarios of rape. The threat of the desire for other western men is given expression in the loving and contentious relations among the westerners as it is recounted at length in the books. This threat is ultimately contained through the literary contributions of the wives/girlfriends. Madeleine\'s, Sis\', Carol\'s, Jill\'s, and Elham\'s contributions not only confirm the women\'s self-imposed celibacy during their husbands\' ordeal. Their contributions also confirm that the homoerotic threat expressed by the hostages is contained, and that women remain the westerners\' love objects. Moreover, in the captivity narratives, the threat of male-male desire seems to be essential for the rehabilitation of the westerners. I have spoken earlier about how the hostages begin their narratives by describing their failed masculine relations to heterosexual domesticity. Thus when one hostage writes that fate had somehow brought him to Lebanon in order to come to terms with his inability to live in intimate association with someone, he means this literally. By intimate association is meant the range of relation between men that span the homosocial and the homosexual, the loving and threatening. As such, these relations figure in the captivity books in a teleology that begins with the westerners\' »inability to live in intimate association« with someone, proceeds to their forced homosocial intimate association with westerners and their fears of being raped by Arab guards whose sexuality is uncertain and ends with their reunification with their wives/girlfriends with whom the episode of captivity is narrated. This progression confirms that the insights of western male hostages have primarily epistemological value. The books demonstrate that the experience of captivity and its representation grant the male hostage a better understanding of »the enemy, God, the family, or self,« but also of their sexuality. It confirms their heterosexuality.

[b]Walid Ra\'ad:[/b] I get the impression that you are making fun of the western hostages? Some may wonder whether you are ridiculing them. What happened to all these men, be they American, British, or Arab was horrible and tragic? Don\'t you agree?

[b]Souheil Bachar:[/b] Yes, I agree.

The books written by the Americans relate a remarkably sordid account, and stand as a fascinating testimony to our horrible ordeal in Lebanon during those years. Abducted and confined in detention centers, »dungeons,« cells, and prisons, we all endured situations of extreme physical and psychological abuse. Beaten and blindfolded, gagged and taped, harangued, threatened, tortured, isolated, abandoned, half-starved, chained, ridiculed and harassed, we suffered greatly at the hands of our captors. And some of us continue to suffer the physical and psychological effects of our detention.

My interest today is in how this kind of experience can be documented and represented. I am also convinced that the Americans have failed miserably in this regard but that in their failure they have revealed much to us about the possibilities and limits of representing the experience of captivity. What I want to ask is: Of all the ways the stories of captivity could have been written, why were they written this way?

 

 

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